Daughter of the Sea

VIII: Discovered

Eilwen took it and pressed it under her nose, breathing in the sweetness. "Oooh, you've been to the cove, you lucky creature. Lovely. I'll take care of it." Her face changed suddenly; she inhaled a little harder. "This is...different than your usual." She inhaled again, her brow furrowing, eyes closing; when they opened again they were glittering with a fierce, primal light. "Angharad. What aren't you telling me?"

Angharad flinched, her heart pounding. Idiot, she thought viciously at herself; she could have handed that grass off to one of the acolytes and nobody would have been the wiser. None of them had trained in the grove long enough to match Eilwen's sharpened senses, or had enough familial knowledge of her to pick up the subtle scent of whatever power had imbued that particular clump of grass - the one she had been in the process of cutting when Geraint had grabbed her arm.

She had known instantly that something had happened, felt the jolt in her whole body the second he had touched her, as though it had burst a dam and allowed a current to pour through: a river of warm sweetness that filled her senses and shot through her fingertips into the very air around her. It had startled her, nearly made her let go of the rock, and when she had whirled to look at him it had been in shock, not outrage, though she knew by his face that he thought she must be angry. He had let go immediately, snatching his hand away as though he had inadvertently put it in a fire, which he might as well have done; had they been among court witnesses he would have been summarily relieved of it. She quaked at the knowledge. At least that was what she told herself, to explain the tremble in her hands, the sudden deficiency in her knees that she'd shaken out by continuing to climb.

And here was her sister - who, having been trained for High Priestess since her early childhood, at eighteen could detect certain signs almost as well as the aunt whose status she was to inherit - and Angharad had, without thinking, just handed her an open book. There was, she realized, looking at that fierce green gaze that was reading far too much of her, absolutely no way to lie her way out of this. She said nothing, warmth creeping up her neck.

Eilwen squinted at her, grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the altar, where the small driftwood fire was crackling with green and purple-tipped flame. She hummed a chant while her slim hands moved in ritual patterns, laid the bundle of grass inside the creamy, rose-streaked bowl of a scallop shell, and placed it near the fire to smolder.

"I need to get back to—," Angharad began, feebly, and took a step back, but Eilwen grabbed her sleeve again.

"Oh no, you don't. You've not been here in a fortnight, anyway; you can spare half an hour to please me, even if you don't care about slighting the goddess." Eilwen smirked at her and leaned over the shell, where smoke began to rise up, fragrant, light and sweet. But there was a rich, heady note as well that Angharad had never encountered before; it pooled in her lungs, and spread a pleasant, pulsing warmth through her ribs and belly and limbs.

"Blessed Rhiannon," Eilwen hissed under her breath; she pushed the grass away from the fire, grabbed her sister by the wrist again and yanked her away. She marched her across the grove and under the arches of the willows until they reached the row of low stone buildings that served as lodging for devotees, and drew her inside her own chamber, shutting the door and bolting it, and shuttering the open window so that the room fell into darkness. "Light," the girl ordered, in a hoarse whisper, and Angharad pulled out her sphere and set it aglow. Eilwen grabbed it from her, tossed it onto her bed and pushed Angharad down to sit next to it. The light threw black shadows upon the walls, hard-edged against the whitewashed stone, broken by the silhouettes of branches and flowers that sat in jugs in every corner. The scent of hawthorn bloom was everywhere, cloyingly sweet.